Brown Sludge

Abramoff’s ShockWaves

January 4th, 2006

Corporate America seems to have this Svengali hold on conservatives. Whenever any corporate hypnotist starts with the “you are getting sleepy… sleepy… your eyelids are getting heavy…” routine – Republicans are the first ones on the stage flapping their arms and bawking like deranged chickens.

As a conservative I have often bemoaned the Rights inescapable tendency to throw themselves on any grenade tossed out by any corporation – no matter how foolish and ill-advised – pointing out that there are few things less patriotic and “conservative” than selling out the entire America workforce to foreign labor markets – and dodging your responsibility to pay your fair share of taxes.

I’ve often cautioned that it is this brush that the left will be able to successfully use to paint conservatives as “greedy” and “corrupt” corporate stooges.

I’ve also often speculated that it would take something catastrophic – something so horrible as to cause a complete route of the Republican party in the next election cycle to set any realistic cycle of change in motion.

As surreal as it sounds – that catastrophic event may have just occurred.

The unbelievably hard blogging Michelle Malkin is tracking the Jack Abramoff plea bargain deal closely. The “A-Bomb” has detonated (as the Christian Science Monitor refers to it) and the shockwaves are threatening to shake the Capitol to it’s very foundation.

For once, the Right isn’t playing this one off.

Oh, I’ve heard a couple of the usual knee-jerk apologists start with the “Democrats are in it too!” garbage already, but the for most part – Republicans are scared – and well they should be. Abramoff’s testimony will almost certainly have a significant impact on the mid-term election cycle – and those aftershocks will likely still be resonating during the 2008 Presidential elections as well.

Soon… VERY soon… the Left Wing Schadenfreude Society will line up – and as Inigo Montoya would say we will suffer “humiliations galore”.

As a conservative it’s my hope that my brethren on the Right (and sisters too) will be able to turn this into something positive.

In the storm of anti-lobbying legislation that will surely follow the coming Abramoff debacle – we will certainly see wave after wave of laws aimed at reducing the influence of the influence peddlers. This should necessarily mean that the influence of corporate lobbyists will be reduced as well. What’s sauce for the goose is definitely sauce for the gander – and there is absolutely no daylight between lobbyists who are paid to get sweetheart deals for a special interest group – and those who are paid to get sweetheart deals for Corporate America.

For too many years now Corporate America has used it’s monetary muscle to buy influence and control politics in Washington. Laws and lawmakers that have made it easy for corporations to run rough-shod over American workers and small businesses might soon face a day of reckoning and find themselves unable to corrupt a once great process anymore.

Here’s to Hope.

Entry Filed under: The Right Has It Wrong